Currently, a number of consumer electronic devices are adapted to receive speech via microphone ports or headsets. While the typical example is a portable telecommunications device (mobile telephone), with the advent of Voice over IP (VoIP), desktop computers, laptop computers and tablet computers may also be used to perform voice communications.
When using these electronic devices, the user also has the option of using the speakerphone mode or a wired headset to receive his speech. However, a common complaint with these hands-free modes of operation is that the speech captured by the microphone port or the headset includes environmental noise such as secondary speakers in the background or other background noises. This environmental noise often renders the user's speech unintelligible and thus, degrades the quality of the voice communication.
Similarly, when these electronic devices are used in a non-speaker phone mode which requires the user to hold the electronic device's earphone portion to the user's ear (“at ear position”), the speech that is captured by the microphone port may also be rendered unintelligible due to environmental noise.